Fundie 'Action Plan' for the Gay Games

“Because our Lord is in charge of the fire and brimstone, however, I think we’re called now to rain-down something else on this global gay parade: the love of Jesus…I think he’d be downtown on the lakefront July 15-22, loving those homosexuals as people created in His own image condemned by sin and the Law just as we were till someone lovingly shared the good news with us and God in His mercy turned our hearts toward Him.”— the wisdom of Pastor Michael Allen of Chicago’s Uptown Baptist Church, who plans to proselytize at the Gay Games

Peter LaBarbera and his fundie brethren couldn’t stop the Games, they couldn’t get sponsors to drop out, so now they are working on Plan C. Peter was kind enough to put up The Plan at the Illinois Family Institute web site.

There is an open letter by Uptown Baptist Church Pastor Michael Allen to Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, and Rev. James Meeks, pastor of Salem Baptist Church in Chicago. LaBarbera prefaces the letter with a fun introduction. You can tell he’s all fired up and a tad pissed that they haven’t been as proactive (you know, all those undercover leather investigations) as he has in combatting the Homosexual Agenda.

Personally, although I am greatly encouraged by Pastor Allen’s pluckiness in wanting to get pastors off their keisters in reaching out to the “Gay Games” attendees, this letter is about 25 years too late. Anyone who has observed a Chicago “gay pride” parade (it’s more like a huge festival; another one is being held this Sunday) can see that much of the Christian Church in Chicagoland has abandoned serious outreach to homosexuals. Or at least Christians have become quite comfortable “tolerating” a “GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered] community” built around destructive sins.

Peter recently did a lot of research at the bathhouse during his undercover work at the International Mr. Leather conference because he needed to educate his Christian audience about the inner workings of “a perversion center where men engage in despicable and dangerous acts with other men.”

The result is that Chicago’s “gay community” has grown and become bolder in its demands and its perversions (witness the escalating anti-religious rhetoric of homosexual activists and the existence of an actual “museum” for sexual sadists, the Leather Archives, located on Greenview St.).

Is it me, or do you get the feeling he’s getting a hard-on just talking about this stuff? Why is he fixated on gay (male, of course) sex? Never mind. The pastor’s letter contains lots of fire and brimstone, but I have to tell you, this whole document is hysterical. You have to read it all to get the full flavor of how sad, petty and mean these people really are — it’s the essence of religion gone terribly wrong. One snippet.

Shame on you!

Shame on me!

Shame, shame on all of us!

Not because full-throttle, all-out Pagan hedonism is about to envelope Chicago’s downtown lakefront, the University of Chicago, UIC, Northwestern University, Crystal Lake, and Oak Park. It’s America, after all, and America is free to sin.

Not because we all stayed mousey-quiet as the Gay Games Machine rolled over scores of morally rudderless corporate sponsors like WMAQ-TV, Walgreens, Kraft, Sidley & Austin, American Airlines, Ernst & Young, Harris Bank, AT&T;, AON, Exelon, UBS, CNA, etc. Sure, we’re a day late and dollar short once again with our witness as Christian leaders, but that’s not the worst of it.

Not because we stayed lamely mute as our state’s Springfield leaders enshrined homosexual behavior as a protected “human right” a few years ago. Wisely or foolishly, some of us narrowly define our jobs to recuse ourselves from leadership on public policy questions, so that’s not even the worst of it.

This goes on and on for a while, in much the same manner, but let’s get to the Action Plan for the Gay Games, as the black and white homobigot pastors unite to save the souls of wayward gay folks in July. One of the highlights will be the testimony of “ex-gays” brought in for exhibition.

So, subject to any better suggestions at this late hour, here’s what I respectfully propose that we as Illinois Christian leaders are now going to do about the Gay Games. We are going to “come out of our prayer closets,” and deploy our forces for:

The Gay Love Offensive

1. Training: We’re going to train our people on gay evangelism, on WWJD?, at one or more of the following:

* Uptown Baptist Church, this Saturday, June 17, and on the opening day of the Gay Games July 15th. Our trainers will be John Greene, Syl Davis of Emmaus Ministries and me.

* Near Grant Park is The Pacific Garden Mission (PGM), which will be our staging area for tracts and bottled water. July 15 … We will also hold repeated open-air training sessions at our Gay Love Offensive headquarters [time and location to be announced].

* Opening Ceremonies at Soldier Field. Streams of our gay citizens will be flowing by, listening in (or cat-calling), as they flow from the Chicago Hilton “Hub” of the Gay Games. That day, we’ll see how many show up and organize for deployment again in Grant Park, and to other Gay Games venues, throughout the week. The PGM will be our hospitality, prayer, training, programming, and logistics, headquarters throughout the Gay Games. For information at any time, call … me at [phone # omitted].

[Who will they drag in as a professional heterosexual?]

2. Programming: On the training day above, and on each day of the Gay Games at the “Free Water & Prayer”, we’ll be introducing one or more Out of the Closet Ex-Gays, who by the power of Jesus Christ and his shed blood, have forsaken homosexual practice and embraced obedience to God. Some will be celibate, some married now with children. But all will be telling their own stories of redemption for onlookers and the media. The Bible makes it clear, as will these speakers, that homosexuality is a sin rut, like so many others, from which Jesus can deliver anyone.

And of course, this absolutely flies in the face of the Gay Games storyline that “unbiased” big media outlets like NBC 5, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Chicago Defender, and The New York Times want so eagerly to promote. (Amazingly, all of these media are listed on the official Gay Games website as FINANCIAL SPONSORS — not just reporters — of the Gay Games!)

[Time to draw the line and say civil rights have nothing to do with gay rights…]

Finally, the joint action you two proposed at Willow [Creek Church] poses another crucial challenge to the pagan media story line: The loving witness of black/white/brown Christians against the inappropriate “civil rights” paradigm behind the homosexual legal and public policy agenda. More on P.R. and programming in the days to come. Any help you can deliver that shows the love of Christ, will be most appreciated.

* Lemonade and water bottles to give away free to passersby, with a kind word.

* Excellent, thoughtf
ul Gospel tracts designed to make passersby think hard about their current path in life — whether or not they are gay.

# All materials will show our website [www.uptownbaptistchurch.org], which will link to solid Gospel presentations and websites.

[CASH is key, friends…here comes the pitch.]

4. Funding: Bill, James, Erwin, Joe, the G-8 [pastors]– and all of you other pastors, Christian leaders, businessmen, etc. reading this — we need your funding help, right now. Uptown Baptist is a small, plucky church that gets 250 folks out on a good Sunday. One friend has told me he will give $20,000 for the Gay Love Offensive described above — but only if you guys will help me out and match him on at least a 9:1 ratio, for a total of $200,000. But c’mon, this kind of money is NOTHING if we’re actually serious about working side-by-side, black and white, to win lost souls for Christ.